Carry Me Home
by CrystallineSolid
Summary: Greg goes to look for Nick after he quits. Post-ep for Homecoming. Spoilers for For Gedda


Title: Carry Me Home  
Summary: Greg goes to look for Nick after he leaves the lab.  
Rating: G  
Spoilers: Homecoming (obbbviously) and For Gedda

* * *

_The mourning dove sings, with two broken wings,_  
_"Carry me home, I'm not afraid."_

_-The Killers_

* * *

Sara and I process the scene in silence. Russell's granddaughter's room shows no signs of struggle, but we search anyway, for anything. God, please, give us anything.

In my mind, I'm still trying to process what happened earlier at the lab. When I think about it, my chest throbs, my heart aches. It's not a feeling I'm unused to when I think about him, but it's not any less bearable. It feels as though Nick is _here_, in the room with us. The air is thick with him, with the absence of him. He should be here with us; Sara knows it, so did I. He should be here with _me_.

It's been an hour since Sara got the call. We've got nothing. Nick is gone; Russell is gone; Morgan is gone; Finn is gone. It's just Sara and me in this little girl's room. But I'm glad that Sara is with me, that she's looking at me like that, that she's worried about me. She is like a cool hand across my forehead…

And Nick's best friend is dead.

And _my_ best friend turns to me, and says, "We need him. Please go find him," and I've been so grateful for her presence.

* * *

The diner is the third place that I look. He's sitting at the same table where we sat four years ago, staring at the chair next to him. I can see from his face that he's lost in memory, that he's seeing the team on that day, so happy, so complete. That he's seeing Warrick.

And I'm seeing Nick, always. How I caught him smiling at me, and couldn't complete my sentence. How Warrick started laughing, when I couldn't help but grin right back at Nick. We couldn't keep our happiness inside our bodies; we had to let it out. Our secret smiles, and his foot brushing against mine under the table. We had kissed in the alley before coming into the diner.

Then Warrick died in that alley.

I walk up to him, see him search for my eyes and find them. He'll always have them, my eyes, my soul reaching through. He is hurt by his own pain; I am hurt by him.

I sit in the chair next to him, and put my hand on his thigh. His face tilts towards mine, but his gaze lands somewhere near my chest and stays there.

"How'd you find me?"

"It doesn't matter," I grab his hand now, tug it off the table, force him to unfurl his fist and let my fingers slip through. I am slipping in between the cracks in his anger, pushing my way through, getting injured in the process: his words hurting me. He quit like it's just his life he's changing, not mine. He loves me, I know, but sometimes I wonder if he realizes that we are beyond love now; that it is _life _now, between us, not love. His life, my life, ours together. He can hurt me all he wants, but I can't stop living my life, just like I can't stop loving him.

"Nicky, we need you. Russell's granddaughter's been kidnapped, and-and Ecklie's shot, and Finn's MIA, and—" His palm is over my mouth, his eyes open wide in shock. I want to apologize for piling all that on him, but all the words are pouring out wrong, so I stay quiet, breathing in the warm smell of his hand.

"What?" he sounds so devastated. I'm so angry at him, but my god, everything hurts for him _and _for me, so what's the point? We need him. I need him. He knows that.

"Come on," he pulls me up by the hand. Relief washes over me in waves. He has come back to me. We're here now, all of us, and we can fight this.

He throws some money on the table, and pulls me out of the diner into the alley where Warrick died. Then he stops, _now_ uncertain, _now_ reminded of why he quit in the first place.

"It's okay, Nicky," I murmur, leaning against his back. "Remember, you're the one who never loses faith, who struggles through the hurt in this world," I laugh breathlessly, and wrap an arm around his chest, holding his hand in mine. "We can't stop all of them, can't stop most of them, couldn't stop McKeen… but could you live with yourself if you walked away now?"

He takes a deep breath, and I can hear the tears in the weight of his inhalation. "N-no," he says shakily. I wish I had said this to him earlier, at the lab. I wish I could have looked past the anger and the hurt in me, to see the hurt in him. We are just so preciously human: there is a mother whose daughter in missing, being consoled by a grandfather who blames himself; there is a girl whose clothes are stained with her father's blood. There is this alley with its memories and its sins. And there is us: here, alive, somehow, somehow alive and here together. We are only human, but for him I can be more.

"Well, we can stop that: stop that guilt from eating at you, Nicky. We can't save everyone, but we can save you and me."

"Save me, then."

I will, I do, I try. Always.

* * *

Do you like it? In my mind, Nicky and Greg had a bit of a fight after the episode but I don't really think they had enough TIME to have a fight- cause all this crazy stuff started happening, and they just had to be all, forget it, come here, I need you... So this post-ep happened instead. What do you guys think?


End file.
